The Trade
by Whumpy
Summary: Daryl and Maggie go on a run for formula for the new baby, but things don't go as planned with tragic results. Is the new baby's life really worth the sacrifices the others are willing to make? I don't own the Walking Dead or any of it's characters. I do have a nice sea shell collection, though. Am I boring or what? Tragic oneshot.


"I'm goin' on a run." Daryl announced. Just like that. Hershel said the baby needed formula or she would die. After losing Lori, T-Dog and Carol that day, they couldn't afford to lose anyone else. They were all teetering on the edge of hopelessness and if they lost Lori's baby girl, the one good thing that had come out of this God-awful, death filled day, they might all just fall off the edge and give up on living altogether. Daryl had to go. As far as he was concerned, there was no choice in the matter. It had to be done and when things had to be done, especially when they were risky and dangerous things, he was the one who usually ended up doing them.

Maggie and Glenn both offered to come along, but because Daryl was going to be making the run on his motorcycle, only one person could accompany him. Maggie swung her leg over the seat of the Bonneville and placed her feet on the passenger foot pegs. She felt Daryl stiffen as she grasped the sides of his waist. It had been a while since she'd been on the back of a motorcycle, and her experiences with the machines were limited to the Honda Trail 90 that they had back on the farm when she was a teenager. Her brother Shawn had taught her how to ride it and it had been fun, but she had preferred to ride on the back. Daryl's motorcycle was much bigger than the little old Trail 90 and the passenger seat was stepped up from where the driver sat so she was able to see over Daryl's shoulders. She felt the thrumming of the bike beneath her and heard the 'thunk' as Daryl shifted and then they were off.

Daryl had to slow down and maneuver the bike through sections of the roadway where cars were tangled together and in a couple of places he had to leave the roadway and drive through the medians to get around the blocked roads. Taking the motorcycle turned out to be a good idea. There was no way they could have gotten through with a car.

Their destination was a daycare facility they'd seen about fifteen miles south of the prison. They had passed by the fenced in playground attached to the large house several months earlier and Maggie was surprised when Daryl had brought it up the minute her father had said that the baby needed formula. There was a Wal Mart about thirty miles west, but it was in what used to be a highly populated area so there would be an abundance of walkers to have to deal with if they tried to get there and the highway in that direction was jammed solid with deserted vehicles.

They arrived at the house and Daryl pulled into the cracked and eroding driveway and stopped the Triumph in front of the chain link fence. He cut the engine and he and Maggie both dismounted the bike. "Leavin' the key in it." he said quietly. "Case we gotta leave in a hurry." He pulled the serape off from over his head and draped it over the handlebars and Maggie waited and watched as he loaded his crossbow. He looked over at her and nodded and then headed toward the gate and she followed.

The gate sighed as he pushed it open and they approached the house cautiously and slowly. Daryl stopped every five or six steps to scan his surroundings. A light wind had begun to blow and the swing set's rusty chains creaked and groaned as the empty swings swayed in the breeze. Daryl glanced over at them and then jerked his head back toward the house when he saw movement at a second floor window out of the corner of his eye.

He put up his hand and motioned to Maggie to stop and he raised his crossbow and looked through the scope at the suspicious second floor window. Part of the glass in the window was broken out on the left side and the frilly white lace curtain near the hole moved slightly as the wind picked up. Was that what he had seen? No, he was sure it had been something more than that. He stood stone still for another minute, watching the window through the scope and then brought the crossbow down and took six more steps towards the house.

Maggie was starting to get impatient. Daryl's paranoia was beginning to annoy her. It was obvious that no one living was here and they could deal with the dead, providing they didn't come at them in great numbers and all at once. She kept her mouth shut, though and followed behind the hunter. After all, if she complained, he'd just shoot back that she should have stayed back at the prison because he'd wanted to come alone, anyway.

It took them all of ten minutes before they clambered up onto the porch and Daryl sidled up to a window and peeked inside the house. The room was a living room and there were shelves of books and stuffed animals against the walls. Some of the books were scattered on the carpeted floor and several of the crayon drawings of people and animals that were tacked to the walls were spattered with what looked to be old blood.

After entering the house through a broken out window, Maggie followed Daryl out of the room and into a hallway. Daryl stopped and brought up his hand in a 'stop' motion and Maggie stopped again. He cocked his head as he listened and he brought up the bow as if he expected someone to pop out in front of him at any moment.

Maggie was about to say something when he gave the 'all clear' motion and moved down the hallway. A sign on a closed door said 'NURSERY' and Daryl stopped beside it and put his ear to it to see if he could hear any noise coming from the room. After a few seconds he pushed the door open and stepped inside. Maggie entered after him.

Maggie searched the cupboards and smiled when she found several cans of powdered baby formula. She stuffed the cans into the empty back pack as Daryl looked out the door and up and down the hallway. Maggie approached Daryl and grasped his arm. He jumped and she smiled. "Let's go." she said quietly. He nodded and held something up for her to see and then he gave her a small crooked smile. The small ragdoll he held up with his perpetually grease stained fingers was adorable. It had brown braided yarn hair and embroidered blue eyes and a happy smile. The little while laced blue flowery dress she wore was well made and Maggie smiled. "She'll love it when she'd old enough to know what it is." she said.

Daryl slipped the doll inside of the back pack and helped Maggie arrange it on her back. "Somethin' 'bout this place just don't feel right." he said to her quietly. "Quicker we're outta here, the better."

They both climbed out of the broken window and onto the porch and Daryl again brought up his bow in case he had to use it in a hurry. He stepped off the porch and looked around cautiously. Maggie stepped off the porch behind him.

His instincts had been right. He didn't see the large man in a tattered prison jumpsuit leap off the porch roof until he was on the ground beneath the man. Maggie screamed in surprise as the man landed on Daryl and she reached for her Glock. Daryl bucked the man off, rolled to his side and reached for his crossbow. "GO, NOW!" he yelled to Maggie.

Another man in prison attire jumped off the roof and landed next to her and she heard Daryl yell, "GO, dammit!" as he was tackled by the man that had just joined the fray. She ran for the gate still reaching blindly for her pistol. She could hear Daryl cussing and the muffled sounds of blows being landed as fists and flesh collided. She turned and saw Daryl scrambling to his feet and she jumped onto the Triumph, her mind going a mile a minute.

What the hell did he expect her to do? Ride this thing out of there? She turned the key and found the kick start with her right foot and thrust her foot down on it. The bike didn't turn over. The Trail 90 had needed to be choked before it would start. She pulled the choke on the Bonneville and looked over her shoulder. One of the attackers was holding Daryl's crossbow and he raised it and pointed it at Daryl who was sprinting towards her.

Maggie yelled, "No!" and Daryl fell with one of his own handmade bolts imbedded between his shoulder blades. She found the Glock and brought it up as the men ran, knives drawn, toward where Daryl now crawled along the ground, trying to get away from them.

"I'll get the girl!" one of the men yelled and he began to draw the string on Daryl's crossbow while the other man brandished a knife as he fell upon Daryl.

Daryl howled as the razor sharp arrowhead tore out a chunk of his flesh as the bolt was ripped from his body.

Maggie fired at the man who had just yanked the arrow from Daryl's back and he fell over backwards and then she quickly fired at the man aiming at her with the crossbow. The bullet hit him just as he pulled the bow's trigger and the shot went wide, completely missing Maggie and the motorcycle. Maggie jumped off the Bonneville and ran back through the gate to Daryl.

"I said to go!" he hissed as she bent down next to him. "Now go an' leave me be! Might be…more of 'em."

"You're coming with me, I'm not leaving you here!" Maggie insisted and she grabbed at Daryl's arm and started to haul him to his feet. His arm was wet and slick with blood and he cried out as he sucked in a breath.

Maggie stared at the gaping wound in Daryl's arm. It looked like someone had tried to filet his right upper arm.

A group of four walkers ambled around the side of the house, moaning and growling.

"Daryl!" Maggie pleaded, "Come on!" She bent down and grabbed him around his waist and helped him to his feet and then he was leaning on her as she helped him towards the gate.

The walkers stopped to feast on the bodies of the men that Maggie had shot, buying her some time to tie the backpack to the sissy bar on Daryl's bike with bungee cords. Maggie tied her sweatshirt around the knife wound on Daryl's upper arm and at his insistence, she secured his wrists with a bungee cord in front of her waist. "I'm ridin' bitch. We gotta get this baby stuff back for that lil' girl." he told her. "I'm bleedin' like a stuck pig an' if I'm drivin' an' I pass out, we're all screwed, 'specially the baby. Can't have that. If I pass out you stop an' you leave me, you hear? You leave me on the side of the road and you get back to the prison for that baby. Her life's worth ten a mine."

Maggie had started to argue with him but he was having none of it. "Just keep that lil' girl alive, an' don't worry 'bout me, dammit." he said.

It wasn't completely different than riding the old Honda Trail 90. The shifting pattern was the same, just one more gear, and the Triumph had more power, and of course, it was bigger and quite a lot heavier. The seat was low, though, and she was able to put both feet flat on the ground when she stopped about a mile before the prison.

She carefully removed the bungee cord from around Daryl's wrists at the front of her waist and then slid her leg over the Triumph's seat and turned so she was facing him. He had stopped responding to her ten minutes earlier right after he'd sighed, leaned forward and rested his head on her right shoulder.

She held him against her and pulled him off the back of the motorcycle, laying him down on his back in the grass on the side of the road. His right arm was completely red and wet with blood and some of it had soaked into her shirt. She could now see that he had been stabbed in the stomach and in the right side of his chest as well. So that was why her back was wet. It wasn't sweat, it was blood. Daryl's blood. He was a bloody mess and a tear ran down her dust caked cheek as she realized that he'd known back at the daycare center what she was just discovering.

He knew then that he wasn't going to make it through this. The strong and seemingly invincible and unkillable Daryl Dixon was dying and no last minute miracle was going to save him.

Maggie sniffled and pushed Daryl's long bangs out of his eyes. He was hands down the most valuable member of the prison group and now they were all going to lose him and for what? For baby formula.

She choked back a sob and Daryl groaned and his eyelids fluttered and then he was looking up at her with those vivid blue eyes of his. He coughed and hacked for several seconds and then winced as a small stream of blood started to run from his right nostril. "How far?" he asked hoarsely.

Maggie wiped at her eyes. "Just another mile or so." she answered.

Daryl raised a shaky left hand and rested it against Maggie's cheek. He pushed away a tear with his thumb. "Those for me?" he asked in a near whisper.

Maggie gave him a small smile and nodded. "Yes. They're for you."

"Don't deserve 'em." he muttered.

Maggie leaned down and pressed her lips to his and held them there for several seconds before she slowly pulled back from her kiss. "Yes." she said and she wiped her eyes again as tears fell from them. "Yes, you do."

The corners of Daryl's mouth turned upward in a small smile and the piercing blue eyes that would haunt her dreams and nightmares for the rest of her life met hers. "Could you...just...again? ...Please."

Maggie smiled through her tears and she leaned forward and kissed Daryl again, letting her lips linger longer this time. She never in her life would have expected Daryl to want anything like that from her, but then again, when people were dying they often weren't thinking straight. It didn't matter. All she knew was that she sure as hell wasn't going to deny a dying man what was probably his last request.

"A...goodbye kiss." Daryl whispered and there was a faint hint of the Dixon Smirk on his face.

It was getting difficult for him to breathe and Maggie took his hand in hers, entwining their fingers. His grip tightened and he clutched her hand to his chest as he fought now for each breath. "Give me…your gun." he gasped. Maggie's eyes got wide. "Please." Daryl wheezed, "'less you...wanna.."

Maggie shook her head and tearfully placed her Glock into Daryl's hand and took his other hand in hers. He held it tightly and there was that smirk again.

"I'm glad…" he struggled to get the words out. "Glad it… was you...here. Now look….look away."

Maggie turned her head, closing her eyes tightly and waited for the gunshot.

* * *

No one was more surprised than Glenn to see Maggie riding up the prison driveway alone on Daryl's Bonneville. He didn't even know she could ride a motorcycle. The gate was hurriedly opened by Carl to admit her and Carl ran behind her after securing the gate as she rode up to the courtyard. Everyone gathered around her as she shut the motorcycle off.

She was covered with blood and she was dirty and emotionally exhausted and she didn't feel like talking to anyone after what had just happened. She handed the backpack to Rick. "Formula and a little doll from Daryl." She said. "We got jumped at the daycare. Daryl... he was badly injured."

"Where is he?" Rick demanded.

Tears started to roll down Maggie's cheeks and Rick's eyes widened.

"No." Rick said, "not Daryl. No.".

Maggie closed her eyes and nodded and she felt Glenn's hand rub across her back. "We got away, but I...he.." She wiped at her eyes again and took a deep breath. "He's dead. His body is about a mile up the road from here. We need to get him before the walkers do." she said.

Beth burst into tears. Rick nodded and said, "I'll go get him."

"Me, too." said Glenn.

Hershel put his arm around Maggie's shoulder. "Are you okay." He asked.

"No." Maggie said. "I don't think any of us are ever going to be okay again." She turned to Beth and said, "You think you could make up some formula for the baby? She must be hungry."

Maggie walked into the prison and headed for the showers. The shower would be ice cold, she knew, but that was okay. She just needed to wash the blood off of her. Daryl's blood.

As she stood under the cold spray and watched the red tinged water swirl down the drain she felt her stomach knot up with nausea. A horrible price had been paid today and was it worth it? She had her own opinion about that. The motherless baby contributed nothing to the group and actually put it in more danger, and what were her actual chances of survival in this cruel new world? Daryl had hunted for and fed the group in addition to being their best fighter. He was a survivor and his life before the apocalypse had prepared him well for this world. He was indispensable and now he was gone.

The blood of a hunter in trade for milk for a baby. No, Maggie thought, it wasn't worth it at all.


End file.
